Community Perceptions of Tourism: Bruny and Magnetic Islands, Australia

Abstract

Tourism is increasingly perceived as important for island sustainability, though also has impacts. Impacts on host communities have negative consequences on desired interactions with visitors, an important visitor appeal of islands. This paper uses social exchange and social representations theories to investigate island community perceptions of tourism development and impacts. The investigations highlight a diversity of island community perspectives, the salient tourism consequences, and importantly the processes that lead to the perceived impacts. On Magnetic Island, the development of resorts, changes to the type of visitor and consequent changes to the social environment was uncovered as a reason not to interact with visitors. On Bruny Island, visitors overcrowding island infrastructure was highlighted as a key reason not to interact with visitors. On both islands, the reason not to interact was more due to the process of tourism development decision-making, rather than the consequent impacts of these developments. Overall, the research highlights the need for community inclusion and consultation in sustainable island tourism policy and planning, both to facilitate the process of sustainable development and to educate communities of the likely consequences.

There Is No Such Thing as Sustainable Tourism: Re-Conceptualizing Tourism as a Tool for Sustainability

“…Most importantly for the present discussion is the legacy of conflict and mistrust amongst residents [49][50][51]53,54]. According to Moyle, Croy and Weiler [54], while there is recognition of the economic and infrastructure benefits of tourism, many residents continue to be opposed to any form of tourism and this can be expressed in hostility towards tourists. Many residents also report feeling a sense of no control over development decisions and disengagement from community life.…”

“…The development site continues to create problems with significant areas of construction unfinished and in a decaying state, and ongoing environmental issues [52]. Most importantly for the present discussion is the legacy of conflict and mistrust amongst residents [49][50][51]53,54]. According to Moyle, Croy and Weiler [54], while there is recognition of the economic and infrastructure benefits of tourism, many residents continue to be opposed to any form of tourism and this can be expressed in hostility towards tourists.…”

Volumetric Analysis of Tourist Arrivals in Ecotourism sites of Cross River State, Nigeria

“…Brida and Zapata (2012) and Moyle et al (2010) points out that there exist two main factors that influences motivation in tourists namely; push and pull factors. Brida and Zapata (2012) stressed that the push factors consists of socio-economic factors of the tourists and the pull factors are the information received and available tourism resources in a destination.…”

Residents’ Attitudes towards Sustainable Tourism Development in a Historical-Cultural Village: Influence of Perceived Impacts, Sense of Place and Tourism Development Potential

“…During the past three decades, a rich body of literature has been conducted to research residents' attitudes towards tourism and the affective factors [4][5][6]. Factors that influenced residents' support for tourism development, such as perceived impacts [2,7,8], community attachment [9][10][11], spatial factors [7,12] and economic dependence [13,14], have been extensively studied. However, while most of these studies concentrated on the impacts on the local community, relatively few studies have been conducted on personal impacts, such as personal economic benefit or cost, psychology, family relationships and quality of life, and the relationship between these personal perceived impacts and attitude toward sustainable tourism development.…”